9th January 2001 Archive

The Office of Fair Trading has refused to investigate VideoPlus-creator Gemstar for alleged anti-competitive practices, despite two anti-trust cases in the US and complaints of monopolistic behaviour in the UK, Andrew Smith writes.

ASPs, ISPs and eMarketplaces will account for 30 per cent of online channel business by 2004, according to IDC. It predicts that shows that online IT sales to Western Europe end-users will "rise sharply" from $4.8 billion this year (1.7 per cent of the IT spend) to $67.4 billion (15.9 per cent) in 2004.

Hacked computer e-tailer Egghead.com said it has "evidence which suggests" that its team of security sleuths interrupted the recent cyber break-in while it was going on, a mysterious event which may or may not have resulted in millions of credit card details being compromised.

Fidelity, the investment fund manager, has bought 255,000 shares in Compel, taking its holding in UK's third biggest reseller up to 2,526,858 - 8.14 per cent of the company. It notified Compel of the purchase in a letter dated 5 January. We guess that Fidelity reckons that somewhere there is a buyer waiting for Compel.

Some funny behaviour has been going on at PC Format. Its December issue had a one-page feature entitled "PCF investigates PC World", where it claimed the monster computer store was ripping off customers, getting inexperienced salesman to push overpriced RAM and charging up to 33 per cent more for other goods like CD writers and hard discs.

OK, we don't mean to suggest there's a drug problem at Intel Ireland, for craic, pronounced 'crack', is Irish for fun, and there's stacks of fun loving Bunny Suiters at Intel's fab in Leixlip, just a little way away from Dublin, in County Kildare.

Four former Express Newspaper Web sites - which were sold for £1 by its new owners last month - have been placed into liquidation. Express.co.uk, Allaboutparents.co.uk, sportlive.co.uk and companyleader.com were said to be costing the business between £7 million and £8 million a year. Fifty people have lost their jobs.

AMD has reiterated plans for a new fab, to be built by 2004. The company has clearly put its top creative brains on the team charged with dreaming up the name for this forthcoming facility. So far, it is expected to be called Fab 35.

We greatly value the emails and contributions we receive from you, our readers, but every now and again someone excels themselves. This is why we feel it our duty to flag up one Craig Poxon, based in London.

Napster's argument that its music sharing service doesn't violate copyright laws is fooling no one, least of all its users. That at least is the conclusion drawn from a survey of Internet users by market researcher Gartner Group.

The Greek language is threatened with corruption thanks to the use of the Internet and computers, according to a gaggle of Greek intellectuals, who have written to their government urging it to stem the erosion of their mother tongue.

The first case of the Internet being used in a court case will start tomorrow. Kingston Crown Court will wire up jurors, witnesses, barristers and the judge to give an indication as to how porn is moved over the Internet.

It has become increasingly apparent that there are more Web sites than there are advertisers. This state of affairs has only one logical conclusion: there will be a shakeout, and only the strong will survive.

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal by six university professors objecting to a Virginia law which prevents public employees from using state-owned computers to access sexually explicit content on the Internet, the Associated Press reports.

Apple has decided two brains are no longer better than one and ditched its dual-processor desktop Mac configurations in favour of single-CPU machines - but trade off is that of these computers (well, some of 'em) are based on Motorola's eagerly awaited G4 Plus chip.

We ran a story last week covering Computer Associates' (sorry, CA's) new corporate branding. Yes, one of the world's most unfriendly companies had transformed itself into a "friendly, open, trusted" organisation simply by using lower-case letters and some pastel colours.

A security patrolman is believed to have hacked his way into computer networks at the Bradwell nuclear reactor in Essex near London and to have altered and deleted information, the Guardian Unlimited reported Tuesday.